Chocolate Milk Mustache

“I really have to go. Breakfast is ready.”

“Ok.”

“Wait! Don’t you want to know what we’re having?”

“Yes Beth.” He doesn’t mean it. But it doesn’t matter. This is part of my Teach Dad by Example campaign.

“Local eggs, sweet potatoes, quinoa and black beans.”

“Sweet potatoes for breakfast?”

“Think outside the box, Dad!”

“I only think out of the box.”

Pause.

“I don’t even have a box.”

This is true.

“Ok. Gotta go. Oh wait, John is turning 30 on Friday!”

“Good thing you’re getting married, you’re both old.”

“You think?”

“30 was the best year of my life.” Ignoring my question.

I can hear that thing in his voice, that time-traveling tone. Both reverence and sadness for the passing away of time.

“What was so great about being 30?”

“I was single and I owned a bar!”

He says this very matter-of-factly, like this is the universally celebrated Holy Grail of “Best Year of Your Life,” requisites. If we were sitting next to each other, and not talking on the phone, he might have slapped me on the back of my head for affect.

“That was also the year you got me you know!?”

I’m his personal historian, if for no other reason to ensure my place in the story.

“Yes. That’s another reason it was the best year.”

Yeah right, but I’ll take it.

“Bye dad. I’ll call you later.”

Dad’s best year gave me one of the best days of my life. I remember exactly no more than the first hour of this fantastic day.

I wake up in my new bed, a princess waterbed (don’t laugh!) a bar patron gave Dad to help him accommodate his new roommate: his seven year-old daughter.

I dress, put my hair in the customary ponytail, brush my teeth and then poke my single, bar owning, 30 year-old, dad’s arm until he wakes up.

On the way to school—the ancient and dilapidated only public school in town—he asks if I’ve had breakfast.

We pull over at a convenient store and walk in together. Is this the first time I’ve gone alone with Dad to a store? I think so. Until this morning, I never went anywhere without my little brother and sister in tow. Things are different now. They live with mom. I live with dad.

I pick out a plastic wrapped banana-nut muffin and a pint of chocolate milk. I play it cool so he doesn’t think he’s spoiling me. Every Roberts child knows: nothing ruins a good time, in our family, like an entitled kid.

Then, Dad does the coolest thing anyone has ever done in the history of cool things: he drives around the school block (twice!) to give me time to finish eating my giant muffin.

I hop out of the pickup truck just as the other kids are filing into the red brick building.

It’s the first morning I’ve ever walked into Roosevelt Elementary donning a chocolate milk mustache over a smile.

For this second grader, best days come easy but not often.

SEX, BUSES and OTHER AWKWARD CONVERSATIONS

My dad never talked to me about sex or what it meant to be a woman, although he did ask me if I needed anything from the store once.

“Do you need anything from the store?”

A highly unusual question indeed. “Um, no.” Immediately wishing I’d
said ice cream.

There are plenty of great treats to be found when you live above a
bar: an endless variety of individual sized bags of potato chips, a
half a dozen choices of soda from the gun, deep fried anything,
barrels of ranch dressing, un-inventoried Zimas.

But never ice cream.

He asked again. “Are you sure you don’t need anything?”

What was the strange emphasis on “anything” for?

“Are you sure you don’t need something?” Third time’s the charm. I got it. He was asking his 13-year-old daughter if she needed “something” he wasn’t comfortable saying from the store. Gross! One of his bartenders must have told him it was time to start asking me what I needed from the store.

I’d rather eat raw onion than ask him for “something,” from the store.

I missed out on the New Kids On The Block phenomenon because I didn’t have the guts to let dad think I liked little-girl stuff. Instead I endured wearing Motley Crew t-shirts to slumber parties, when the other girls all donned full length JOEY nightgowns. Mothers whispered about my “street smarts,” and politely suggested to their daughters that I be left off the next birthday party invite list.

It’s true; I went to great lengths not to be mistaken for a kid. But I never said I wanted to be a woman.

I was across town visiting my mother for a weekend when she sat me down for what would be the only Sex Talk of my life.

She started into the conversation with the same subtlety I’d come to expect from her. “Your cousin Jenny is pregnant.”

Jenny is five years older than I. Only a few years earlier she was my favorite babysitter. Once, when I asked for cheese on my hotdog, she tossed a slice of American right into the pot with the boiling hotdogs. We still talk about it.

Mom continued, getting straight to her thoughtful advice, “Don’t have sex. But if you are going to have sex, get one of your friends”—she said “friends” kind of snidely, she resented my having friends—“and get on a bus and go to Planned Parenthood in Scranton.”

That was it. Everything I needed to know about sex in under a minute.

She stood up and left for another room. I slipped a single Marlboro cigarette from her soft pack—I’d been eying it the whole time—and walked out.

Who does she think I am? My friends and I haven’t even started to think about...Public Transportation. I’d only ever been on yellow buses, the kind you don’t have to tell the driver where you’re going, the kind of buses that haul kids around like cattle on the way to the slaughter house, or school, whatever.

Scranton was 16 miles north. Who knew how far away Sex was?

A Picture Worth 746 Words

If you’ve ever seen a picture of the Roberts children, no doubt it was of three kids dressed in their best, standing in front of a Christmas tree or on the steps of St. Roses Church. Invariably, two of these children would be shining smiles.

The third, however, was perpetually on the losing end of a teary battle of wills with a curling iron wielding, aerosol hairspray toting stepmother. The eyes of the oldest Roberts child would be red and puffy, though not as puffy as her bangs.

I have one photo in my possession that stands as an exception to the customary holiday spectacle. From what I can glean, this rare image was captured for no reason at all. In fact, the only thing the three of us are doing is sharing a playpen. At age four, I’m holding my infant sister. Our middle brother is holding himself upright, no small feat for his age. Our faces are frozen in varying degrees of bemusement. The carpet is green and shaggy. My hair knows no stepmother or curling iron. In fact, the most remarkable thing about the photo is its unremarkableness.

Long before parents began uploading daily shots of their kids onto the internet; this picture was taken with film. If my parents had the option to view the image before printing, it would have likely been as fleeting as the moment itself. But this unexciting photo lives on to supply a sliver of illumination onto those early and formidable years.

And so, one last detail about the photo: Draped on the side of the playpen is a gray softball jersey.

Cue the creaking of the door to my imagination.

“Hey kids, how about you hang out here for an hour or so! Daddy has a game!” says the shirtless man. Snap. Parenting is easy! “Be good for mom!” Dad grabs jersey, three kisses and he’s gone.

When my memory does come into focus, I’m at a park and I’m yelling, “Wiggle your butt Franny!” to my dad, who dutifully does wiggle his butt just before cracking a softball with an aluminum bat.

Whack!

Three years later, I’m the youngest and smallest on my Miss C softball team by years and feet. A gaggle of girls huddle around a cardboard box full of new, yellow, team shirts. I want the shirt with the number four on it badly, but I’m not about to embarrass myself over it.

Sidebar: I might have still been reeling from a mortifying incident a few months earlier when I mistook the YMCA’s deep-end for the shallow-end and jumped in for a quick and terrifying dip to depths unknown. All this only moments after the mother of another swimmer pointed out the girl who wore a dance leotard (complete with sleeves) to the first day of swim lessons. (I self-rescued from the submersion but have never been able to dress myself properly).

Back at practice now, eyes squeezed closed, I reach into the box and pull the number four shirt. Holy cow Batman! I run to the pick-up truck where dad is waiting. I don’t have to say anything. I hold up the backside of my shirt. We drive away, both beaming.

I’ve heard the best way to become a doctor is to be born a doctor’s child. Police work, firefighting and teaching also seem to be inherited like a Roman nose. Likewise, many great hobbies are passed down through the generations. Sailing, I’ve gathered, is a birthright.

Beer league softball is like that for me.

At age 20, for the first time in my life, I boarded a plane. Seven or so hours after landing, I found myself in Telluride, Colorado. I picked up a Daily Planet. On the front page of the paper: A girl, sliding into home plate. She’s wearing a purple wig.

The soft ball that is my head went swimmy. My heartbeat stomped around the bases.

Two years later, I moved to Telluride for Beer League Softball. I stayed for the Beer League Softball.

Dad still plays. And all these years he has worn the same number: Four. It’s the number he picked his first season, back when that was the age of his oldest child and all his kids fit into one playpen.

When I come up to the plate on Sunday for our team’s season opener in Telluride’s Town Park, I’ll do what I always do, I’ll wiggle my butt for Franny.

The Deer on the Bar Story

by George Greenbank and Beth Roberts

In 1973, George Greenbank, Kent Ryan, Buddy Crane and Wayne Watkins were working in construction in West Telluride, (today’s Hillside). One particular day on the job, above all others, lives on in infamy.

It started with an old stag that came down off the hillside looking for grass under the new snow. A new-comer, probably an east-coaster who only knew deer that looked like Bambi, stopped while driving out of town to observe the hearty Mule Deer.

The gawker’s dog was interested too. It jumped out of the back of the truck bed and started after the deer scaring the deer over the fence and onto the plowed highway.

George and the others observed the scene from their position atop the roof they were working on. Wayne, a transplant from California, was particularly sensitive to the buck’s plight. He went down to the road and cut the top wire of the fence, with hopes of giving the deer access back to the meadow.

Not much time passed before the Town Marshal, Everett Morrow, a tough, hippie-hater, drove up in his Ford Falcon police vehicle. Morrow appraised the deer and the broken fence. In an instant his mind was made. He walked toward the now worn-out buck and drew his revolver.

Wayne went nuts: screaming, running and waving a hammer as he ran from the construction site down to the highway.

But it was too late. Morrow had shot the deer. Now his smoking gun was turned onto the hysteric and hammer wielding Wayne.

Morrow didn’t pull the trigger again, despite Wayne’s onslaught of insults, objections and threats. Instead Morrow returned his gun to holster and himself to his Falcon. Without a word, he drove back into town.

The crew quit work at 5p.m. Before leaving to meet their ski patrol buddies, as was their custom, at the Sheridan Bar, the men helped Wayne load the dead deer into his jeep. Something had to be done. Within minutes they found themselves lopping a dead deer onto the Sheridan Bar. No one objected.

They told anyone that would listen that night about the day’s injustice. They drank, waited, drank, and waited some more, all the while expecting Morrow to show up to face the deer on the bar of the Sheridan.

Morrow never showed.

The mayor, Francis Warner did. He told everyone to go home. The old dead deer on the bar was removed by a miner who, over the course of the night’s debauchery, bore witness to the crew’s indignation and ultimate unraveling over a deer’s death.

By spring the hippies were organized. At the next election, five new-comers, including George Greenbank and a hippie backed mayor, were elected. Change had come.
Only too late for the old buck.

Immediately following the swearing in of the new council, an emergency meeting was held. Marshal Everett Morrow was fired on the spot. Council promptly requested his badge and gun.

Morrow, indignant, whipped the badge across the chamber floor toward the council. His hand went to his gun.

What Morrow said next would be the closing line in the two Western movies that were being played out in Telluride, the one in which Morrow was the villain and the one, in his own mind, in which he was the hero.

“The badge is yours. But the gun is mine.”

In the beginning, we did everything wrong.

I always wanted a dog, even when we occasionally had one.

Maybe because he knew he wouldn’t give her kids of her own, dad gave his first girlfriend (after the divorce from mom) a Samoyed named Yukon. Mom coached us kids to call the dog Pukon. That’s all I remember about Pukey; the relationship didn’t make it past house-training.

Later, when dad re-married, we acquired Rocky: a German Sheppard who ate rocks. Rocky, like everything else nice in our lives (the BMW, the electric piano, the yogurt in the fridge), had the distinct feeling of belonging exclusively to Nancy, evidenced by the disappearance of all of the above after the divorce.

By the time I had a Driver’s License we were again dogless and newly living in the house dad had grown up in. He bought the house from his parents, having sold The Bar, and not a minute too soon. I had already stolen my first Zima, which I sipped, alone, in my attic bedroom, while watching of all things: Charlton Heston as Moses in The Ten Commandments.

One afternoon, dad came home with a puppy that was meant to be a purebred, only the breeder’s stud Labrador literally ate through a kennel to mount the breeder’s German Sheppard, an animal instinct my sister and I confused for romantic.

For no memorable reason, we named the puppy Hobie. Being a weekend we then did what teenagers and single 30-somethings do: we each went Out, only to return, hours later, disheartened. It was non-negotiable: the dog could not be named Hobie.

It was the ‘90s and everyone on planet Earth was watching Baywatch. We learned that night, as so many people were compelled to talk about it, one of the show’s stars was named (and I bet you knew this) Hobie. We weren’t a Baywatch house we were a Sci-Fi house, damn it! So, and hardly believing this wasn’t our first instinct, renamed our dog we did: Obi-Wan Kenobi.

In the beginning, we did everything wrong. There was no kennel and hardly a leash. We invited Obi onto furniture (OK I did). Our favorite party trick was a demonstration of how gingerly Obi would take a tortilla chip hanging from my teen-aged mouth.

Dad likes to say, “Plant potatoes. Get Potatoes.” Well, for what we lacked in discipline, we might as well have moved to Idaho. Every day after school, I’d hold my breath as I opened the front door, afraid to learn what shoes he’d destroyed, what door he managed to scratch through, basically, what hell he’d unleashed.

On one particularly motivated day for Obi, I opened the front door and the first words that popped into my head surprised me almost as much as the scene before me. Of course, I’d heard the words before, but I never put them together in my own mind: Home Invasion. I honestly thought, at least briefly, that someone had ransacked our house, like you hear about in big cities and in movies.

How could a dog pull carpet back 35 feet from the front door? How could a puppy move furniture across different rooms? How could Obi, our dog without thumbs, pull up iron grates from the floor?

We had a cat, a witness to it all. She too looked shocked as she navigated Obi’s interior musings. Note: there are entire websites devoted to emotional looking cats, in case you question that detail.

On this morning, 13 years later, dad choked back tears as he told me, over the phone, only the facts: Obi needs to be put down. Maybe as soon as tomorrow. His hind legs can’t hold him up anymore. He’s in pain.

In that first year we had Obi, the dog not only ushered in an era of new shoes, carpet, stone tile at the front door (try to dig that up!) and furniture; he also demonstrated, beyond a shadow of a doubt, we were not ready to have a dog.

But alas, Obi grew to be protective like a German Sheppard and playful like the best Lab. He’d leap through an open window into the front seat of the car the moment you even thought: ride. He’d fetch his own leash and never hesitated to bark madly for help whenever I locked myself out of the house. Obi was the dog that would easily win the affection of dad’s third wife and keep them company when I went off to college and later when I left Pennsylvania for Colorado.

With the same duplicity demonstrated by dad’s affinity for pouring scotch on top of beer, he managed both hot-headed infuriation and undying affection for Obi. Despite being unprepared, inconvenienced, challenged, taxed emotionally and tapped economically, dad loved Obi unconditionally; without hesitation. Not at all unlike the way my young, occasionally-single, father found himself loving his kids.

Maybe the ability to pull that off is as prepared as anyone can be for this life. And, maybe, this is an Ode to Dad as much as it is an Ode to Obi.

The Sound of Home

I missed another family gathering, this time my little sister’s one year wedding anniversary, and housewarming party, at their new organic farm in Pennsylvania. To ease my guilt and make amends, I make a phone call. Immediately, a lump crawls into the back of my throat. If home had a sound, it’s what I hear next.

Grandma squeals my name when she realizes it’s me on the line. Grandpa gives a warm “helloooo” from what sounds like a short distance.

It’s no understatement: without these idyllic grandparents there would have been a void, the size of sugar and spice and all things nice, in the lives of at least three Roberts children. Time spent with them was a reprieve from our early admittance into the Adult World of Divorce.

These days, my siblings and I are fascinated with their personal histories, but the Greatest Generation is a tight-lipped one. To get story gold, we apply two rules of thumb: don’t miss an opportunity and start with a very specific inquiry.

On this occasion, I ask about a ring Grandpa made for Grandma.

“I don’t know how he made it or where in the world he got the idea,” says Grandma. “It’s amazing what your mind can come up with.”

Grandpa explains: he made the ring while deployed overseas during the Second World War. He used only a hammer and a knife. It took him one week to turn a George Washington quarter into a ring for a wife he’d not seen in months. (Before 1965 the coin was made of 90% silver and 10% copper).

I mistakenly remembered the ring as Grandma’s wedding band. They correct me, but no matter, this got us onto another story from the archives: their wedding.

Grandpa, an Army man, was stationed in Wisconsin; Grandma, a nurse in training, was in Maryland. The two had been engaged for a couple years. A ceremony was staved off so Grandma could finish school. She would have been forced out if she were married. Married women didn’t belong in school.

In January of 1944, during a furlough, Grandpa traveled to Fort Mead to visit his fiancé.

It was there, just outside the Fort, they were married.

“Nobody was there, except two people we didn’t know,” says Grandma. “They stood up for us,” Grandpa pipes in. They have me on speaker phone. Grandpa is at the stove sautéing zucchini from his garden. Grandma is, no doubt, perched inches from the phone’s mic. I can hear them both perfectly.

On the night of their wedding the newlyweds rented a room at a boarding house where they would spend only one night. Under the bathroom sink, there was a small space heater. Grandma’s bathrobe was too close; it caught fire.

I imagine Grandma: young, happy, tousle-haired, scared, in love and wrapped in a bathrobe with a burn hole.

She’ll go on to have seven children and later, dozens of grandchildren. This young bride will grow to be a vigilant protector. She’ll take every precaution with these children. Not one of us will escape her waterproofing method of bread bags over our socks.

But in this moment, nothing is certain for these two. The following day Grandpa returned to Wisconsin, Grandma to Fort Mead Army Camp. A portrait of the times: a husband and wife readying for war. Three months after their winter wedding, Grandma was deployed to Europe. Grandpa went shortly after.

It would be more than a year later, in April of 1945, before they would see each other again, this time in Paris. I know my grandmother to be notoriously sentimental; her grey-blue eyes can turn to glossy pools in an instant. I ask if this reunion was a weepy one. “I was too happy to cry,” she says.

But, of course, the tone was somber. “The president had just died." Grandma is talking about the American president: Franklin D. Roosevelt. "Everything was closed. All entertainment, the whole time: CLOSED! There was nothing to do but sight see. So we sight seed. We saw all of Paris and the Cathedral of Notre Dame,” Grandma recounts.

I can’t wrap my mind around the juxtaposition of this love story and the short-lived one belonging to my parents. In one generation, the narrative see-saws from a near-tragic romantic epic to, essentially, what amounts to John Cougar Mellencamp lyrics.

I have a lot of questions, I keep interrupting. Grandma says “I know it’s hard to understand. We'll tell you more when you come home.”

I want to tell them, as long as they are talking to me, I am home.
###

Yuk is invited to the party!

We've been invited to an Alter-Ego party, which of course has sent me to day-dreamville, where I usually like to start with a little logomachy.

Alternate: occurring or succeeding by turns.

Ego: the self especially as contrasted with another self or the world.

Alright, we're looking for my different self here; not to be confused an alternate can of worms: my opposite self.

My instinct is to attend the party personifying a rock star. I've long held the belief that if I could sing, "I wouldn't be here right now." Which is meant to say, I'd be touring or getting a tattoo or having a ton of casual but really intense sex.

After some examination, I decide that fantasy is just an angsty rebellion against reality. More of an alternate lifestyle than ego. I'd be navigating that world with my current ego intact.

So what's my other self doing when my self is running the show?

This is the voice that I've been trying to snuff out my entire adult life. It's jaded, cynical and usually judging you. You? You mean me? Yes, you, the you that is her alt-ego who rarely shares the light of day with her.

Most people are about 20 when the development stage of life ends, and it's about then when the battle for center stage between my alternating egos ceases. This is when Yum finally prevails over Yuk for dominate ego. But Yuk doesn't go away. The attached bell-curve (click to enlarge image) best demonstrates the relationship between the egos over the last eight years. The curve trends upwards measuring rejection and loathing of the alternate ego until age 26. This is when I come to terms with Yuk (convenient change in perception since this is also when I accept her permanence), and the curve bends, if not towards self-love than at least towards acceptance. Alt-ego says, "whatever hippie."

Ahhh, now I've got my alter-ego in the cross hairs:

Yuk ignore most grammar rules. i reject conformity in general. i only eat and wear things that others have thrown away. it tastes and looks better to me if an entitled or wasteful person has cast it aside. i don't own a cellphone and despise being subjected to half-conversations when i ride public transportation. i mostly travel by bicycle. i roll my own cigarettes with organic tobacco and i don't think that is ironic. the only modern medium i have an affinity for is blogging. and no, i don't see the irony. My blog: "everything sucks and here is why," is read by only a handful of family members who are worried about me. not that i'd admit that.

My alternate ego is a cynical, hypocritical, freegan, Luddite, blogger!

And now, finally, I know just what to wear to the party!